How could this have happened to her? She should have propped the door open.
Stupid mistake.
Now she beat on the wood with one fist, just hard enough to hurt her, but not to break her hand. Pain was good. It cleared her mind. Mallory pulled a cell phone from her blazer pocket, but there was no dial tone. She was standing in a dead zone.
St. John had said that Charles and Riker would return soon. But would they stay if they thought the theater was empty, if the party was obviously over? This room had a tight enough seal to prevent the stink of Richard Tree’s body from escaping. Was it airtight? Was it soundproof too?
Mallory heard the spit of electricity above her head. The lightbulb died, the room went black, and she had to remember to breathe.
Though she knew every inch of this room, she could not conquer the idea that one misstep would plunge her into an abyss. There was no up or down in absolute darkness, no marker for the solid world. Her arms hung useless at her sides. And her lungs were also failing her, taking air in shallower sips. A sensation of fluttering insect wings brushed the walls inside her chest.
But she would not call it panic; she called it remembrance.
This was every vacant building where she had made herself into a tight ball of a child, holding her breath and waiting for dangerous feet to pass her by in the dark. Then came a little girl’s life-and-death decisions about staying too long or leaving too soon. The magic men were right – timing was everything.
Was the platform airtight? If she stayed too long – One hand rose by force of will, and not her own. Kathy the street child was taking over, forming one tiny hand into the hammer of a fist and pounding on the wall. Mallory stood off to one side of her mind and listened to the outraged little girl. Young Kathy was screaming, „Let me out, you bastards! Let me out!“
The platform was not soundproof. Mallory could hear noise on the other side of the wood. Running feet were coming toward her. The child was hollering at the top of her tiny lungs, a torrent of anger and obscenity; but the woman, absent all emotion, coolly pulled out her revolver and aimed it at the place where the door would open.
The light was a wide painful crack in the wood.
Riker’s startled eyes were fixed on the muzzle of her gun. „Well, it can’t be something I said. I just got here.“
Chapter 14
Charles Butler wondered if it was just the dubious perk of a very large nose, for he was the only one who seemed to be put off by the faint odor, that stale souvenir of yesterday’s dead man emanating from the platform room. Riker was unaffected. The detective chewed on his pastrami sandwich as he stood by the open door.
Charles forced a smile, knowing full well that every happy expression made him look like a circus clown on medication. He hoped it might assuage the cold anger in Mallory’s face. „Locked yourself in?“
Oh, wait. That was the wrong thing to say. It implied an error on her part.
„No, I didn’t!“ She turned away, dismissing him as she spoke to Riker. „Someone locked me in and cut the electricity.“
Riker stopped chewing, his eyes clearly saying, What?
Charles looked up at the rack of burning spotlights overhead. And beyond the opening of the back curtain, he could see the glow of footlights and the brilliant chandelier, all clear indications of uninterrupted energy. But he was not inclined to point this out to Mallory. „Well, you know the wiring is new. There might be a problem with – “
„It wasn’t faulty wiring,“ she said. „The timing was too damn perfect.“
There was only one way to take the tone in her voice. She was obviously counting him among her enemies. The enemy team was everyone who was not in complete agreement with her.
Charles braved the odor as he entered the platform room and reached up to the lamp suspended from the ceiling. He unscrewed the lightbulb and shook it. „You’re right, it wasn’t the wiring.“ He emerged from the room, shaking it again so she could hear the sound of the metal filament against the glass. This was the time-honored test of a burnt-out bulb. Now that should reassure her.
Too late, he saw his second error of the afternoon. He looked down at the dead bulb in his hand and shrugged his apology for this indisputable evidence against her own theory.
Riker made a game effort to distract her from Charles, saying, „If Nick Prado hadn’t mentioned that you were – “
„Where is Prado now?“ She was not in a pleasant mood.
„Here I am.“
Charles looked toward the end of the stage behind the backdrop curtain and beyond the reach of the overhead lights. In this shadowy silhouette that didn’t show his paunch, Nick Prado might pass for his own delusion of never-ending youth.
„Someone locked me inside the platform.“ Mallory was glaring at Nick, not exactly aiming for ambiguity in that accusation.
Feeling a draft at the back of his neck, Charles turned to the square hole in the wall where the window glass had not yet been installed. A sheet of plastic had come loose at one corner, allowing a steady breeze in his direction. So the wind had blown the door shut. He hesitated to mention this. First, there was the rudeness of pointing out the obvious. And then, she so disliked being corrected, particularly when she was wrong.
Riker, wise man, jammed his hands in his pockets and kept silent.
„Only the wind,“ said Nick Prado. „You get a lot of things wrong, don’t you, Mallory?“ He was aging badly with every step toward the lights. „Take Louisa’s death. It looked accidental to me. I was there, and you weren’t.“
Mallory was cooler now. Her words had only the barest trace of malice. „It might’ve been staged as an accident, but she wasn’t mortally wounded.“
Nick seemed to be considering this as he walked beyond the backdrop curtain to look over the new bags from the deli. „She could’ve died from shock. That happens.“
„In fifteen minutes? Not enough time,“ said Mallory, walking away to inspect the plastic over the window.
Charles noticed that Nick was slightly irritated, disliking her insult of the turned back.
„Right, I keep forgetting. You know everything.“ Nick looked down at the fun-house mirror that served as a tabletop. It was littered with paper bags and a half-empty bottle of champagne. He lifted the bottle and held it out to Riker in an obvious invitation.
In a rare exception to habit, Riker shook his head, declining to drink with the man, and Charles had to wonder about that. A half hour ago, the detective had no problem lifting a glass with this man. And who could eat a pastrami sandwich without something to wash it down?
Nick poured wine for himself. „You know, it could’ve been shock. During the war, textbook rules for death were broken all the time.“
Mallory was busy collecting tenpenny nails from the floor beneath the plastic window covering. „The medical examiner said – “
„Do you ever listen}“ Prado raised his voice. „To anyone?“
Charles was staring into his wineglass, as if it might offer him sanctuary, and Riker was looking at his scuffed shoes. But Mallory did no bloodletting. She only dropped her collection of nails into a zippered compartment of her knapsack.
Nick continued, expanding his voice in a stage projection, as if he had a larger audience. „One morning toward the end of the war, a plane went down near my field camp. It was in flames seconds after it smashed into the ground.“
He paused for dramatic effect, and Mallory squashed the moment, saying, „I don’t have time for war stories.“
„Shut up!“ said Prado, in a rare display of anger – in fact, the only show of temper Charles had ever witnessed.
Oddly enough, Mallory did shut up, ignoring the man as she opened a notebook to a page of numbers, which she seemed to find more interesting.